Owners of ATMs sometimes attempt to offset the high cost of owning and maintaining an ATM by renting out screen space to third parties, such as vendors, for displaying advertisements for the goods and/or services provided by the third party. Third parties lease screen space because it enables them to advertised their goods and/or services to ATM customers without having the expense of owning and maintaining an ATM.
One problem associated with renting out screen space to third parties is that the ATM application that controls the flow of screens presented to a user of the ATM is very complex. This makes it very difficult and time consuming to modify the application. As a result, owners of ATMs are reluctant to allow the third parties to change the advertisements too frequently. For some third party vendors, the goods or services that they advertise via the ATM may have limited availability, or the price of the goods and/or services may change frequently. This means that it may not be convenient to advertise the goods and/or services as part of a long term advertisement.
Another problem associated with renting out screen space to third parties is that the third party is not able to access the peripherals (for example, the printer, card reader, currency deposit module, and such like) within the ATM. One reason for this is that the ATM only allows secure access to its peripherals to protect against fraud. Another reason is that the ATM provides inherent resilience to ensure that the ATM remains operational even if a minor fault develops. Thus, any third party advertisement or other application cannot provide a user of the ATM with a receipt or other printed information and cannot accept payment from a user unless the third party application is made an integral part of the ATM application.